Gwyn Lurie — Woman of the Year — Democratic Women of Santa Barbara

Gwyn Lurie is my business partner and political opposite. The one thing we agree on is that we make each other better. Well, better and more tired.

I was proud that Gwyn was honored this past Sunday as the Dem Women of Santa Barbara’s ‘Woman of the Year.’ Had the Dem Women checked with me I could have tipped them off Gwyn’s speech would be unexpected. And that’s exactly what she delivered. Gwyn’s speech was no normal cheerleader rally and many readers have inquired about it. So I thought it might be useful to post it here. – Tim Buckley, COO. 

<After introducing her holocaust survivor mom, Gwyn on the podium.>

12/10/2023 – Of any organization in Santa Barbara County, particularly at this moment, there is none from which I would be more honored to receive such an award, than Dem Women. I have long admired the independent thinking of this organization and the courageous positions you have taken over the years. How, through your actions as a group, you have, over and over, exemplified the best of democratic values, something I think we can all agree we’ve taken for granted for too long. So, to be singled out by you as Woman of the Year is an honor I do not take likely.

I look around and I am very aware that there are many women here today who could be the woman of any year. I thought a lot about what I wanted to say today that would be worthy of your time. And of this honor. And because this is the Democratic Women of Santa Barbara, I decided what I wanted to talk about was leadership. And women doing it differently.

So let me begin by saying that over the years it has become very clear to me that leadership is not an office. It’s not a fancy title. And it should never be confused with power.Leadership is an orientation. It’s a way of being in the world. It’s a willingness to stand up and take responsibility in this life.

I don’t need to stand here and tell you about what a difficult moment this is for our world. And how much is at stake in this moment. We’re each, in our own way, involved in trying to push things in a better direction. And it’s hard. And at times overwhelming. Because the forces we’re up against are very tricky and often elusive. The playing field is not only unlevel but littered with landmines.

When Claudette Roehrig reached out to me on September 21^st to ask me if I’d agree to be honored by Dem Women Santa Barbara, I was not expecting it. (Well, I kind of was because Merryl Zegar kind of tipped me off,) but let’s, for the sake of a good story, agree to suspend disbelief and go with the surprise phone call on September 21^st.  Please keep that date in your head.

And when I was told that I was expected to give a speech, I immediately knew that I wanted to talk about: the project I’ve been working on for the past 18 months, that, at its core, aspires to exemplify the highest democratic ideals. It’s called the Giving List Women and its mission is to help the world understand that girls and women are not only worth supporting, they are the single most powerful lever for bringing about change. They are the key to unlocking a better future. And yet, less than 2% of all philanthropic dollars currently goes toward organizations focused on women and girls.

Next Spring, we are bringing together, here in SB, 150 philanthropic and impact partners from around the world, to strengthen this narrative that helps the world to understand why it is imperative that women and girls be a lens, and not a lane, in giving. 

So that’s what I intended to talk about today. How things would look very different if there were more women in power. I’d have put every penny that I had, and those that I’d yet to make, on that.

And then, October 7^th happened. Then October 8^th. And my certainty that women would do it better was tested. And in some very important ways, we didn’t do it better. And that broke my heart.

Come October 8^th women had a very important time at bat. And in my opinion, we kind of struck out. And stuck out spectacularly.

In the wake of Hamas’s terrorist attack against Israel, where women were raped, babies and grandparents were slaughtered or kidnapped, or unspeakably worse, we didn’t hear a peep from any of the women’s organizations. Not in Santa Barbara. Not from the thousands of feminist organizations, women’s studies departments, or feminist leaders. Not locally, not nationally, not globally.

And… I was vexed. And deeply, profoundly saddened.

Where were the women who taught us that silence is complicity? The millions who donned their pussy hats after Trump was elected and marched for women’s rights, terrified that Trump would turn America into the Handmaid’s Tale. Who call for an end to violence against women and the end to women as spoils of war. “Believe all women” they said in the op-ed pages of newspapers across the country, writing in favor of #metoo.

I thought #me too was such a landmark moment. Women were finally standing up and saying Enough! We will no longer be silent! We will no longer just take it. We will not continue to play by rules set up by male dominated institutions that neither represent our voices nor protect our interests.

Statutes of limitations on rape cases were extended. The legitimacy of gag orders against women were being questioned and, in some cases, ruled out. Women were coming out from the dark corners of this world and risking everything to bravely speak up, and for once, our voices were being heard.

Yet, there we were, on October 7^th. Once again, rape is used as a weapon of war. Young women bleeding from their crotches, paraded through the streets of Gaza. Yet, I was not seeing a single statement from a feminist organization in this country about it. Not one gender studies department was defending even one victimized woman. The silence was deafening. It took the UN 50 days to say anything.

As a woman and as a feminist this offends me. As a mother of two daughters, it terrifies me.

I trust we can all agree, rape is never okay. That kidnapping a 9-month-old child is never okay. And, that the loss of innocent life in war is utterly tragic.

And, that silence is complicity.

Some, I think, were afraid to speak up. Maybe for fear that it would seem like they were saying that the Palestinian people and their plight doesn’t matter. Which of course it does. But for some reason in that moment, it became too difficult for so many to hold more than one thought at the same time.

I am not afraid to speak up. I am speaking up because I am afraid.

I still believe with all my heart, and brain, that having more women in positions of power will profoundly improve our world. That it’s our greatest hope. But only if we are willing to do things differently. And courageously.

The fact is, it really doesn’t matter how many girls and women we prepare to lead. To lead families, to lead businesses, to lead universities, to lead countries … if we’re not going to make the conscious decision to lead differently, then it’s just performative. It’s just set decorating. It’s just fashion…it’s pussy hats. Which I happen to like, by the way.

Because clearly, as women we are susceptible and capable of engaging in the same tribalism as men. Unless we choose not to. Because we understand that this moment calls not just for women to lead. But to lead differently. So, what would that look like?

The eminent psychologist Abraham Maslow famously said, “To the man who only has a hammer, everything he encounters looks like a nail.” Which is another way of saying if a man (or woman) only has one tool for solving problems, he or she will attempt to use that tool to solve EVERY problem, even if that tool is pretty much guaranteed not to work. So, we need more tools in the toolbox.

But first we need to identify the problem. As I see it, the enemy of progress, and of peace, is the algorithm. 

The algorithm is the echo chamber that exists on the internet where we all get most of our information. What’s worse, the algorithm has jumped the rails from the internet to our actual corporeal lives and spread to other forms of what we used to call “discourse.” 

Today most discourse is much more “dis” than discourse. 

As I see it, the algorithm is another form of authoritarianism. Silencing oppositional voices through careful, curated omission. The result is our computers have become a 24-hour regurgitation of what the algorithm already knows we like to hear. A cyber-Hallelujah chorus, if you will.  

It’s gotten so bad that just 45 miles from here, in Westlake, people were shouting at each other and so determined not to hear “the other” to the point where a man smashed another man over the head with his megaphone, not only killing him, but providing the most poignant metaphor for the world we find ourselves living in today. 

People do not want to even hear what the other has to say. It has gotten so extreme that the three university presidents interrogated by Congress earlier this week appeared downright Trumpian:  obstinate, arrogant and recalcitrant at the very inquiry directed at them. How were than any better than Donald Trump at one of his many depositions?

But there IS hope. I have seen the solution and I have been fortunate to participate in it. I have witnessed far better tools than Maslow’s Hammer used even here in “sleepy Santa Barbara,” and implemented with great success: 

One of my first jobs when I came to Santa Barbara was as an elected member of the Montecito Union School Board at a time when our district was a mess. A popular principal had been fired. Parents were petitioning to recall Trustees. The Board was dysfunctional and therefore ineffective. And who was suffering? The very kids we were there to protect.

I quickly learned that everyone wants what’s right for their kids. The problem is, we often don’t agree on what that means. So what mattered was how we show up in-order to work together to find meaningful solutions to difficult problems.

As a newly elected board we decided to establish norms and values for our board. Agreed upon rules of engagement so that we could do our job. We agreed to some very simple ground rules including:

• Assuming best intentions.
• engaging in active listening
• Sharing our disappointment directly to and not behind the backs of our adversaries. Or worse, online.

All pretty basic, common-sense stuff. But it worked. We went on, I believe, to do excellent work on behalf of the children. We even hired the district’s extraordinary Superintendent, Anthony Ranii, who is here today. Who is one of my mentors who taught me that there is no one who is unworthy of being listened to. Even the people I can’t stand.

Another example I’d like to share with you takes place in my day job.

My work partner, Tim Buckley, and I, disagree on most things political. I look at the sky and I see blue. He sees… a completely different color. But I can tell you in no uncertain terms that working by his side makes me better. Hearing his views makes me better. He reads everything I write, and he will often say: If you just take out this one trigger line people may not agree with you, but they will still be open to hearing you. And that’s meaningful to me. Because if I’m just talking to myself, then what’s the point?

We’ve taken this “embracing of the other” even further with our Dinners with Friends which I wrote about recently in the Montecito Journal. “Dinner with Friends” is an ongoing series of dinners my husband and I have on a fairly regular basis with people from different backgrounds, with different biases, different histories, different faiths, different strategies, and yes, different skin color.

And regardless of our different “tribes,” we have created respectful Rules of Engagement for having meals and political discourse in each other’s homes. To the point where after October 7, the first people to check in on me and my family were a few of our Black friends, some of them Muslim, although our relationships started from a place of some mutual disappointment and distrust. Today I count the people in this group among my good friends in Santa Barbara.

The three examples I just gave are all different forms of the same thing: engaging with “the other,” people with whom we have a beef, but we treat each other with respect, creating rules of discourse, and the most important thing in terms of our world of trigger words and over-sensitivity: rather than avoiding that which makes us uncomfortable, leaning into it. We sit with the very people and ideas that may be foreign to us. Because to do otherwise, we are robbing ourselves of the chance to grow. We’re all just living in the algorithm writ large. And what is the algorithm but a sophisticated version of Maslow’s Hammer? It’s very good for those 5 trillion-dollar internet companies. But I don’t need to tell you how it’s been going for us, the human end users.

Women are not monolithic. Like any group, there are many strong opinions among us. We will never, all of us, agree on any issue. Not on tax policy, not on women’s reproductive rights, not where free speech ends and hate speech begins, or how to achieve peace in the middle east.

But we can agree on the rules by which we are going to have these vital conversations.

We can agree on the importance of respecting the different paths each of us has traveled. We can agree to encourage difficult dialogue. We can agree to not cancel one another. We can agree to commit to the absolute rejection of violence, in all its forms, against all women. And men. We can agree to lead with compassion.

In the 20 years I spent working as a screenwriter… there was almost never a time that I didn’t get to the middle of the second act of a script (where there are 3 acts,) usually around page 70, that I didn’t get lost. When I had to look back and remind myself what this story was intended to be about. To remind myself what I was trying to say.

And then, I would get to the end of the 2^nd act, around page 90, to the place in the story when all was lost. It’s the moment in a movie when our hero decides that in order to win, she must stand up and risk losing everything.

My friends, we are now living on page 90. Welcome to the end of the second act of our story. The moment when we most need our heroes and would-be heroes to stand up and do the right thing. To risk losing in order to win. Because the stakes could not be higher. And because if that doesn’t happen, none of us is going to feel very satisfied with how this story ends.

As women we can change this world. I believe that with every fiber of my being. And we can be models not just for our children, but for all the wonderful men in our lives. But it will involve courage and leadership and a willingness to do things differently so that in the end, all will not be lost.

I believe we have the chance to get this right. We can elect great women to every level of office, we can have women in every boardroom, in every C-suite. We are uniquely poised to step up and to make our values visible simply by how we lead. We can, each of us, become the heroes of our own story. And I say let’s do this. But let’s do this differently. It’s time to dust off our pussy hats.

Thank you for this honor. And thank you for all that you do!